- Hey friends, welcome back to the vlog.
In this episode, which was filmed
at the end of February, 2020,
before the Coronavirus decided to take over the U.K.
I'm embarking on a quest to create the world's best,
most in-depth online class on how to study for exams.
The class has just launched on Skillshare,
who are kindly sponsoring this video,
so you can check it out for free
by clicking on the link in the video description
if you'd like.
But, this is the behind the scenes of the vlog
of how we put it together.
So, the day starts at 8am when I get up
and spend an hour generally screwing around on my iPad,
which I made the mistake of parking next to my bed
before going to sleep.
At ten past nine I finally negotiate myself out of bed,
drop of my Oura Smart Ring on its charging dock,
out on my Apple Watch Series 4,
and head into the shower.
I end up singing Something Just Like This
by Coldplay and The Chainsmokers
on repeat for like half an hour for some reason.
Not really sure why.
Then after changing into semi-fresh clothing
I mindfully empty the dishwasher,
wash the dishes, clean the kitchen a bit,
and make my morning cup of coffee with the Aeropress.
At 9:30 I procrastinate a bit more
by sorting out the living room and setting up the camera
ready to film the class.
At 10am, Angus, one of my new team members arrives,
and we spend some time
going over the structure of the class,
and making sure the videos we've already planned
make sense within that structure.
We're using the app Notion to plan everything as usual.
So, here you can see us with our list of lessons
and juggling things around
to try and come up with a structure,
and eventually we decide to split the class
into three parts.
Firstly, how to understand what we're studying.
Secondly, how to remember what we're studying.
And thirdly, how to maintain motivation and focus
for studying.
At 11am, filming begins with videos about
how to understand anything
with the Feynman technique,
some stuff about active recall of course,
and then an in-depth discussion about whether and how
to take notes during class and after class.
Alright so, it's 1pm and so far we've filmed
seven videos of the class;
The three steps of effective studying,
understand anything, active recall, active recall,
how to take notes, how to take notes,
and scoping the subject.
And, we've got a little funky setup going on so
a Sony a7 III,
backup microphone Rode Video Mic Pro Plus,
small HD monitor,
proper microphone, Rhode NTG4 Plus I think up here
which is hopefully slightly out of frame,
and then Aputure 120D with the space light over there
and that's Angus over there.
- Hello
- Angus has been helping out with the course
so he's really cool.
And then in a bit I'm gonna order some takeaway
and then try and bash through the rest of these, like
20 videos that we have to do in the next few hours
before the physiology supervision this evening so,
exciting times.
Alright so, welcome to the second segment of the course
which is about remembering, so
segment number one or step one was understand,
step two is remember,
and as a reminder, step three is focus.
So we'll talk a lot more about kind of
distractions and motivations and procrastination,
all that kind of stuff in the focus segment,
but now we're gonna be diving into
all of the evidence based tips for
remembering/memorizing things,
but again just to retrace,
understanding is the most important part.
I continue filming videos in this vain
for the next 45 minutes until lunch arrives
from Pizza Express.
To motivate myself to continue filming these videos,
I tell myself,
"right, I'm allowed to give myself
one slice of pizza after every video.
So hopefully, sixteen slices, sixteen videos,
what a legend".
This is classical Pavlovian conditioning
in action ladies and gentleman.
For the next few hours, I filmed more and more
videos for this;
rewarding myself with a slice of pizza,
sometimes two, in between each one.
Yes I'm using scissors, don't judge.
This is actually the best way of cutting pizza.
It's just so easy, look at that.
It's so clean, so effortless,
and only heathens would judge someone
for using scissors to cut pizza.
At 3pm, having done another five or so videos,
I take a break to make a cheeky cup of coffee
with the Aeropress
and then continue doing more and more videos.
Alright so what's the time?
So it's ten minutes to four and we've just,
this is where we're at so far.
So um, we've got how to study for exams.
We've done all the understand videos,
we've done most of the remember videos
and I've actually just done the video
about the peg system which is one these fancy
memory techniques that I used to use
in my second year.
And I've dug up, thanks to Evernote,
I've dug up this document that I wrote
ah here we go, in August 2012.
This was just before my first year of university
when I decided that I wanted to become
a memory champion and become really good
at memorizing stuff,
cause that's what you did in med school.
It's basically like, the peg system is about
converting numbers into words.
And so this system means that
a "1" becomes a "T" or a "D"
and "2" becomes an "N",
a "3" becomes an "M".
And this is what I used in my second year
of med school to memorize loads of
references for papers that we had to put in our essays
because that was the way, at the time, to get a
high mark on essays by showing you had
external evidence and that you'd done wider reading.
So I got some papers off the internet that I could
put into each essay
and then I used this peg system to like memorize
what the reference was.
And that like worked great for remembering
these random obscure references that I could then
put into my essays.
And in my second year I actually got a first,
and I think part of that was down to the extra,
extra little spicy bits that that I put in my essays
from using the peg technique to memorize just
a whole list of references, but yeah,
just done video about that for the class.
Now I'll do a couple more then take a quick break
to eat a bit more pizza
and then, then we'll continue.
Alright so, it is half past five, just about,
and I now need to head over to Girton College,
which is one of the colleges of the University of Cambridge,
to do my physiology supervision.
So, we're gonna be talking about the kidneys
cause they've just finished up their
Fluids and Electrolytes lecture series.
Which is all about the kidneys
and so we'll just run the session based around that.
Yeah, right, do I need anything else?
Oh I need to buy food on the way there;
snacks for the session.
Cool, lets go.
So then I drive over to Girton College,
grab some snacks from a petrol station along the way,
and run the supervision from 6-10pm.
Right so, that's the kidney supervision done,
on the physiology of the kidneys.
It's really really fricken cold right now.
Um, we went over, basically, the kidneys.
So there was group of five,
I met a group of two, and then a group of three.
It lasted about an hour each.
And so we went over basic functions of the kidneys,
so, filtration and reabsorption,
and then we talked a little bit about
acid-base homeostasis and serum osmolality homeostasis
and then we kind of planned a few essays as a class;
talked about how we'd go about answering certain questions
of their essays.
So one of the fun ones was
the idea that a single can of Coke contains more
hydrogen ions than the entire body put together.
Or something like that.
So how does the body respond to such a large amount
of phosphoric acid when you drink a can of Coke.
And that was all about the different sort of buffer systems.
So there's five main buffers in the blood
and in the kidney filtrate
that the body can use to buffer hydrogen ions.
Then we talked about medium term compensation
for the respiratory system.
Now I'm heading over to the station
to pick up my cousin
who is visiting the U.K. from Pakistan,
and he is gonna stay with me in Cambridge
for a few days, which is very exciting so,
let's say hello to him.
So, here we have Jansef, Jansef say hello.
- Hi
- Jansef is visiting from Pakistan,
he's in the process of taking his PLAMPT
to come to the U.K. as a doctor.
And we have just ordered some food
from that kebab and burger store,
which, I'm ashamed to say is like the
fifth time this week that I'm getting a
chicken wrap from there, but hey,
what can you do?
We drive home with the chicken wraps,
have a quick chat, and then I leave my cousin
to his own devices while I continue filming
the rest of the videos in this class.
And everything gets wrapped up at around 11:30pm.
Alright so all these videos are finally finished.
I have done about twenty-eight videos today,
and I think that's a pretty good going.
So, this is the SD card that has all the audio in it,
and, this is the SD card that has all the video in it.
And, I'll show you the setup.
So, down the hallway.
This is like the extra computer that I have
just to upload files.
So I'm gonna chuck the files from the SD card
onto the external hard drive,
and then I'll upload them onto Google Drive over night
so that Christian, my editor,
can get the files in Romania,
and then he'll be able to edit them hopefully.
So, he's got his work cut out for him,
sorry about that Christian.
But hey, it's gotta be done.
Am I right?
And then after transferring all of these files over,
I set up the airbed in the living room
and we call it a day.
I'm pleased to report that this class
on how to study for exams is now live on Skillshare.
In total it's over 35 videos,
covering evidence based techniques
around everything you could want to know
about how to study for exams, in a structure
that's hopefully easy to follow
and hopefully makes sense.
The reason I like putting stuff on Skillshare
is because, firstly, Skillshare is amazing,
for less that ten dollars a month
you get access to thousands of online classes
including now two of my own,
and secondly, Skillshare is very generous
in that they've got a two month
free trial in which you can watch as many
of the classes as you'd like, including my own.
So if you're subscribed to Skillshare like I am,
you can click the link in the video description
to access all of these videos in my new class
or if you're not yest subscribed to Skillshare
you can click the link in the video description
to sign up to the two month free trial,
which you can use to watch the class
and a load of others, and others
I'd recommended initially are my friend,
Thomas Frank's classes on building your own
productivity system, and he's got a new one as well
about building habits, and I've found
both of these really helpful personally.
Anyway, that's the end of the video.
Hopefully it gave you an idea of what the
behind the scenes process looks like
of putting an online class together.
Thank you so much for watching,
and see you in the next video.
Goodbye.